The Best of Me
by AmyLeigh88
Summary: When Bellamy and his men come back injured from an unauthorized mission, not only does Kane blame him but Bellamy blames himself. Clarke does what she has always seemed to be able to do: see the best of him.


**Author's Note: **So this is my first foray into The 100 fandom. I have loved Bellamy/Clarke since basically the pilot episode and have toyed around with several fics for months now but haven't been satisfied enough with any of them... until now. As with most of us fanfiction writers, reviews make my day. So let me know what you think. Enjoy!

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><p>"Get, Clarke!" Bellamy barked at Monroe as he and Martinez, an ex-guard from the Ark, hauled an injured Miller through the gates surrounding the Ark settlement. Logically, his brain told him that he should be yelling for the elder Griffin – the <em>actual<em> doctor – but even though the hundred and the survivors from the Ark had been reunited for months, Clarke was still the first one he thought of whenever there was a crisis. Glancing behind him, Bellamy counted the rest of his men to make sure that they had all made it back inside the walls, and he breathed a small sigh of relief that all seven of them were accounted for. Granted, Miller and Lincoln weren't in great shape but they were still breathing and would hopefully stay that way with Clarke and Abby's help.

They were halfway to the medical bay when Clarke came rushing outside, her golden hair flying behind her, followed closely by her mother and Jackson. Bellamy and Clarke's gaze met briefly before hers shifted to Miller, and Bellamy watched her eyes widen at the sight of Miller's blood-soaked shirt as Dr. Griffin and Jackson came running over to help Bellamy and Martinez carry Miller the rest of the way into the medical bay.

Once they had laid him down on one of the metal tables, Bellamy backed away slowly until he came into contact with the hard surface of the wall. He watched as a couple of the guys helped an injured and limping Lincoln onto another metal table and Jackson moved to inspect his wounded leg while Clarke did a once-over on the men that had carried him in, who looked to have some cuts on their faces. Their injuries must have been minor because the next moment Clarke was waving them off and making her way over to him.

"Is he-" Bellamy couldn't bring himself to finish his question.

Clarke glanced back at Miller, his t-shirt had been cut open to reveal a stab wound near his right shoulder. "I don't know," she answered truthfully, turning to look at Bellamy once again. Her eyes dropped to his arm as she saw the crimson stain on his left jacket sleeve and the trickle of blood coming from underneath the cuff. "Bellamy, you're bleeding."

Bellamy's brow furrowed at her words. Looking down, he turned his arm over and saw the cut in the material before sliding the jacket off his arm to see just how bad it was. With the adrenaline that had been pumping through him, first from the fight and then from the urgency to get their wounded back to the settlement as fast as possible, Bellamy had all but forgotten about his own injuries. "It's nothing," he brushed her off.

Grabbing his arm, Clarke looked at it more closely. The cut was deep, almost like a defensive wound from some kind of blade. Clarke wondered what had happened with the Reapers but she knew her questions would have to wait. "It's not nothing," she insisted. "You _need_ stitches." Clarke shifted slightly to move into Bellamy's line of vision to get him to focus on her. The look of annoyance on his face at her persistence did nothing to mask the worry in his eyes. "They're in good hands with my mom and Jackson," she reassured him. "Come on." She took a hesitant step backwards in hopes that he would follow her.

As his eyes darted away from hers again, Clarke steeled herself for an argument but instead Bellamy nodded his head with frustrated huff. He followed behind her silently as they made their way to a small alcove that was separated from the main room of the medical bay that was part of the salvaged Alpha station. "Sit," Clarke ordered, pointing at a chair against the wall.

Doing as he was told, Bellamy sat down and watched as Clarke opened a supply chest. He leaned his head back against the wall, closing his eyes as he took a few deep breaths. There were no frantic voices coming from the other room so he supposed that was a good sign. The sound of a chair scraping on the floor made him open his eyes once more to see Clarke sitting across from him, her knees brushing against his. He watched as she poured some antiseptic on the small rag in her hand before she held her hand out and looked at him expectantly.

With a small sigh, Bellamy rested his arm in her hand. "There were twice as many Reapers as the scouts reported yesterday," he offered before Clarke even had the chance to ask the question as she dabbed the antiseptic over the gash to clean the wound. "We were ambushed."

A week ago, a couple of scouts had found a small nest with four Reapers in a cave system five klicks north of the Ark settlement. Bellamy knew what those mutants were capable of and had wanted to send a raiding party to wipe them out before the Reapers had the chance to invade their home. Kane had insisted that with them being five kilometers away, they were not an immediate threat and even if they were closer there were so few of them that they could deal with them easily when they had to. Then yesterday the scouts had reported that there were six Reapers that had moved within three klicks of their settlement and Bellamy had grown tired of waiting.

So just before dawn, he and seven of their best fighters, including Lincoln and Miller, had made their way under the cover of darkness towards where the Reapers had last been seen. They had found the camp seemingly unprotected which should have been the first indication for Bellamy that something was off. It was just too easy. When they had entered the camp they had found only a couple of the mutant freaks still sleeping and had easily disposed of them quietly. As they were sweeping the area, they had noticed the mouth of a nearby cave. They had made it maybe ten meters inside the cave when they had heard a battle cry and found themselves being ambushed by twelve Reapers.

Then it turned into complete and utter chaos. Bellamy vividly remembered the blood that seemed to cover everything in sight, including himself, and the stench of it. In his experience with the Reapers, they didn't go down easily which had proved to be the case once again.

Clarke's voice pulled him out of his thoughts. "Ambushed?" Her eyes were wide with concern. "Bellamy-"

"Don't worry, Clarke. They won't be coming here," he told her, cutting off whatever she had been going to say and effectively letting her know that all of the Reapers had been taken care of.

"And this?" she asked, nodding towards his arm.

Bellamy thought about it for a moment as he did his best to recall when exactly during the fight with the Reapers he had been injured. "I shot one in the head and then the next second another one came at me from the side. I put my gun up to block his sword but he got me," he explained. Looking down, he watched as Clarke picked up the curved needle and thread. She glanced up at him as she brought the needle close to his skin, and in an effort to try and distract himself, Bellamy continued talking. "Lincoln ran the guy through with his sword –" He stopped mid-sentence and gritted his teeth as Clarke weaved the needle through his skin. It hurt like a son of a bitch. He continued talking as Clarke worked to stitch up the gash. "Which was enough time… for another Reaper to take a swing at him…and slice his leg open…but I put two bullets in the Reaper's chest…when Lincoln went down."

"What about Miller?"

"I didn't see what happened to him," his voice pained as he responded, and it wasn't just from the needle that Clarke was still threading through his skin.

A familiar voice drew both of their attention away from their conversation. "Where is he?" they heard Kane demand from the other room. Neither of them heard the reply but seconds later, Kane was standing a few feet away from them, an angry scowl marring his features. "As soon as you're done here, I want to see you in my cabin," he ordered Bellamy and without waiting for a response, he turned and stomped away.

"Fuck," Bellamy groaned, his head falling back against the wall with a loud thud. The last thing he wanted to do right now was listen to Kane yell at him and tell him how much he had fucked up.

"I'm coming with you," Clarke told him, continuing to stitch his wound.

He shook his head as he looked at her again. "No, you're not, Clarke," he argued. "This is my problem."

"And when you told me what you were planning yesterday, I agreed with it so it's my problem too," she rebutted. They were a team. They had been since the day Charlotte died really. Sure they didn't always agree but when everyone had united again after their ordeal with the people inside Mount Weather, her and Bellamy's bond had been stronger than ever. They had been through something together that first month on Earth that her mom and Kane would never understand. No one would really.

"Clarke…"

She tugged the black thread through again before lifting her eyes to his with a raise of her eyebrows, almost daring him to tell her no. Bellamy was still amazed that she was as stubborn and obstinate as he was sometimes.

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><p>"Your rashness almost cost us lives today, Blake!" Kane yelled, advancing on his younger co-councilor. "The fact that you somehow managed to keep most of the hundred alive for a month doesn't mean that you're a good leader. It just means you were lucky."<p>

Bellamy's jaw clenched as he leveled Kane with a fiery gaze. His hand fidgeted at his side as he fought the urge to punch the smug, know-it-all bastard in the face. He barely registered that anyone else was in the room until he felt a soft touch on his forearm. He glanced over at the woman standing to his right, only to see the pleading look in Clarke's eyes. In an effort to calm down, he took a deep breath and slowly unclenched his fist.

"Another stunt like this," Kane warned in a low tone, "not only will you be off the council but you'll be spending some quality time with the others who think that the rules don't apply to them." Then the older man walked away and began to talk to Wick about some modifications to long range communication devices that he was working with Raven and Monty on.

Out of the corner of his eye, Bellamy could see Clarke's gaze fixed on him but he wasn't ready to talk yet, he just needed a moment to himself. So ignoring her, he turned on his heel and walked out the door of Kane's cabin and to the edge of the small hill that it was perched on. The most frustrating part for him was that Kane had a point.

Leaning up against a tree, Bellamy looked out over what had become their home as he continued to get lost in his musings. Despite Kane's order, Bellamy had insisted on waiting in the infirmary until he knew that both Miller and Lincoln would be okay. His fear had been that Miller had been mortally wounded in the fight with the Reapers and that they hadn't gotten him back to camp quickly enough but Abby had assured him that the Reaper had missed the vital organs when he had stabbed Miller and that both he and Lincoln would recover. It hadn't made him feel any better.

If he had just waited…

He watched as a group gathered by the large fire towards the center of the settlement, their laughter faint but still audible from where he stood. Bellamy was so lost in thought that he didn't even hear Clarke approach him from behind. "He's wrong, you know," she stated.

Turning around to look at her, he shook his head as he responded. "No, he's not Clarke." He could tell by the determined expression on her face that she wasn't going to accept that.

"We've known about those Reapers for a week and all we did was sit around and discuss whether we should risk people in getting rid of them even yesterday after we found out that they were getting closer _and_ that their numbers had grown," she reminded him, stepping forward. "But you, _you_ acted. You did what had to be done."

Bellamy opened his mouth to speak but Clarke continued before he could say anything.

"Did you act rashly?" She rolled her eyes as she mimicked Kane's words. "Yes. Should you have taken more men with you? Sure." Her gaze was intense and Bellamy found himself having to look away as she spoke. "But you did what you had to do to make sure that we _all_ survived to see another day."

"Tell that to Miller who nearly bled out as we carried him back here," he countered, finally looking at her once again.

"Miller knew what he was getting into when he agreed to go," she told him, moving so that she was standing right in front of him. "And what he said about us surviving without the Ark being luck, even Kane knows that's bullshit." Bellamy dropped his gaze from hers once again and stared at the ground between them. That comment from Kane had rankled Clarke. She knew how hard Bellamy had taken it when he had found out that less than half of the original hundred were still alive after their battle with the Grounders had taken even more lives.

They both had done everything in their power to keep everyone alive and for Kane to throw that back in Bellamy's face was a low blow. "Without _you_, we wouldn't be here." She thought back to their search for Jasper where Bellamy had caught her, preventing her from falling to her death in a pit of spikes. She thought about the night when Dax had tried to kill both of them and Bellamy stabbed him. Then there had been her meeting with Anya to broker 'peace' with the grounders and how Bellamy had been the one to save her life. "_I _wouldn't be here," she added softly.

That got the reaction she had been hoping for as he looked at her once again. The expression on his face softened and the way he was looking at her made her heart skip a beat.

She wanted him to know what she saw when she looked at him. He so easily believed that he was nothing but a screw-up but he was wrong. "Yes, you are… impulsive and pig-headed and, let's face it, kind of a jerk sometimes." Bellamy couldn't help but chuckle at that. "_But_ you're also brave and loyal and smart and a born leader."

Other than his mother and sister, no one had ever believed in him the way she did. The crazy thing was, when she said these things to him, he actually believed her and more than that, he found that he _wanted_ to be the version of himself that she seemed to see. "How do you do that?" he asked quietly.

Clarke's brow knitted together in confusion. "Do what?"

"See the best of me?"

He moved closer and it felt like the air was being sucked out of Clarke's lungs with each step he took. "Because I see who you _really_ are," she replied, her voice sounding a little too breathless to her own ears. Silence filled the space between them as they stared at one another. Her nerves took over and she continued talking. "The man who would do anything to protect the people that he cares about. The man who inspires – "

Suddenly, her words were cut off as Bellamy pressed his lips firmly against hers and cradled her face in his strong hands. Her eyelids fluttered shut as the surprise of his kiss faded and she kissed him back, reaching out and grabbing onto the front of his t-shirt in an effort to get closer to him. All the reasons that she had told herself time and again that she and Bellamy should never be anything more than friends and partners seemed to fade away.

Clarke usually let her head guide her. After all, it was the one thing that more often than not kept her out of trouble. But more and more with each day that passed, it was her heart that – particularly when it came to Bellamy Blake – ruled her. She would be lying if she said it didn't scare her, but as she felt the firm, sure pressure of his soft, full lips as they slanted against hers in a surprisingly chaste kiss, it wasn't fear that gripped her heart that they were crossing a line that couldn't be uncrossed. Instead she felt a calm wash over her and the rightness of it all made her sigh softly as she parted her lips a bit so she could deepen the kiss.

The sound must have brought Bellamy back to reality because he pulled back ever so slightly so that their lips barely brushed against one another. Clarke opened her eyes slowly, a little dazed. He was still so close, she wondered if he was going to kiss her again but instead he grazed her bottom lip with the pad of his thumb as one corner of his mouth ticked up in a crooked smile.

She loved it when he smiled, it made him look so young and unburdened, and it hadn't escaped Clarke's notice that lately he had been smiling more, especially when they were together. If she was being honest, so had she. "Bellamy…" she breathed, the ever practical part of her knowing that they needed to talk about what had just happened. They had been dancing around whatever was going on between them for a while now but so far they had managed to ignore it and pretend as though nothing had changed. There was no pretending anymore.

Bellamy took a step back, still smiling at Clarke. "I'm, uh, gonna go find Octavia. See how Lincoln's doin'," he told her, walking backwards. Clarke cocked her head to the side with a slightly exasperated expression as she watched his retreating form. He knew that they _should_ probably talk about it like Clarke obviously wanted to do, but it was just, Bellamy wasn't sure if he was quite ready for that conversation. Yet.

He had just turned around and started walking away in earnest when Clarke called out his name. "Bellamy!" Stopping in his tracks, he turned to look at her once again. "I'm coming to check on your stitches later," she informed him with a raise of her eyebrows.

"You know where to find me, Princess," he responded, a shit-eating grin plastered on his face. Then he did an about face and headed in the direction where he had last seen his sister, unaware of the way Clarke did her best to hide her uncontrollable grin behind her fingertips as she watched him walk away.


End file.
